Commonsense reasoning and commonsense knowledge in artificial intelligence

Ernest Davis and Gary Marcus share their views on the significance of common-sense reasoning and common-sense knowledge in artificial intelligence (AI). Many intelligent tasks, such as understanding texts, computer vision, planning, and scientific reasoning require the real-world knowledge and reasoning abilities. Techniques for implementing common-sense include logical analysis, handcrafting large knowledge bases, Web mining, and crowdsourcing. Intelligent machines need not replicate human cognition directly, but a better understanding of human common-sense is needed to perform such activities.